Detective Chief Superintendent Christian Hartvigsen popped the cap off a lager and tilted the glass expertly before filling it to the brim with the golden liquid.
Wagner watched him with disgust. He couldn’t understand how the man could stomach anything at all after having seen Dicte Svendsen’s film. But Hartvigsen was of solid rural stock and a part-time farmer himself, to which his powerful body and ruddy cheeks bore witness. Perhaps, Wagner thought maliciously, he had chopped enough heads off geese and nothing touched him anymore.
‘What do you think?’
It was a question Wagner ought to have asked, but the words came from his boss while Wagner was visualising him with his arms around a struggling goose, white feathers flying everywhere.
‘I ran it past IT,’ Wagner informed him, taking a step back. Now Hartvigsen had pulled his packed lunch from his briefcase and the unmistakable smell of liver paste filled the room. The food served in the canteen was not usually filling enough, so the Detective Chief Superintendent’s wife was in the habit of making a few extra open sandwiches for her starving husband.
‘And what do they say?’ munched Hartvigsen.
‘Just that it appears to be the real thing,’ Wagner said. ‘Nothing to suggest a hoax,’ he added.
‘And nothing else came with it, you say? Apart from the envelope?’
Wagner shook his head.
‘But something still might,’ Hartvigsen suggested, scrunching up a piece of greaseproof paper from his lunch into a small, compact ball.
‘Are you thinking what I’m thinking?’ Wagner asked, lowering his voice even though there was no one else in Hartvigsen’s office.
‘Terrorism?’ Hartvigsen mentioned the unmentionable just as casually as if he had been discussing the best way to pluck a hen.
Wagner nodded.
‘Svendsen, did you say?’ Hartvigsen asked, changing the subject. ‘That journalist?’
Another nod.
‘Why her, I wonder. Something in her past? That business down at the port? She’s involved with immigrant communities, isn’t she?’
More greaseproof paper rustled. Wagner watched as liver paste sandwich number two was lined up and dispatched into the huge mouth.
‘Well, I wouldn’t say she was involved.’
‘Something about her daughter, as I recall?’
‘Rose has a Pakistani boyfriend—or rather, had,’ Wagner corrected himself. ‘He was studying medicine. But after that business at the port he dropped out and applied to the Police Academy.’
‘After nearly butchering a man halal-style,’ Hartvigsen pointed out gently. ‘Someone must have helped him to get onto the course.’
‘We did.’
‘Was that wise?’ Hartvigsen caught a limp sliver of cucumber with his tongue as it was about to slide off the liver paste and land on the desk. He washed it down with a gulp of beer.
‘He was found not guilty in accordance with paragraph 14.’
‘Which is self-defence.’
Wagner nodded. ‘We recommended him to the Academy because we felt that he was basically decent and he needed to get away from Aarhus. Besides, we need his kind in the force. We all know that.’
Hartvigsen nodded, his mouth full of food. ‘Well, we’ll get someone with experience now, that’s for sure,’ he declared and took a deep breath. ‘So, you don’t think there’s anything in that? In Svendsen’s link with this Pakistani—what’s his name?’
‘Aziz Sami. No, not really, though it’s too soon to tell at this stage. If anyone has problems with the immigrant community, it’s Aziz. Not Dicte Svendsen.’
Hartvigsen looked quizzical as he raised his eyebrows.
‘Before his studies he was just a street urchin like so many other young men in the Gellerup area,’ Wagner explained. ‘During the case at the port he started mixing with this community once again and many people considered him a traitor for helping us.’
‘So the man’s got a problem? Do we have any more information?’
Wagner sighed. He couldn’t really see where this conversation was leading. ‘Nothing.’ He could hear his own impatience.
Hartvigsen waved his hand in the air, as if wiping a slate clean. ‘It’s worth keeping in mind,’ he said. ‘There might be a link where you’d least expect it.’
‘But what do we do with this?’ Wagner nodded towards the computer screen. ‘Initially, it’s a murder investigation.’
Hartvigsen sent Wagner a searching look. ‘Murder. I suppose it is,’ he said. ‘But where’s the victim? Where’s the killer? Where’s the crime scene?’ He flung out his hands. ‘What’s the point of all this?’
Wagner cleared his throat and made a last attempt, but even he realised that the case had greater implications than the Aarhus Crime Squad could handle. ‘If we had a little more time we might be able to identify the victim and locate the crime scene. And take it from there.’
Hartvigsen reached for the telephone. ‘A-division! On their own? I don’t think so. Not in today’s world. New York, Madrid, London. Bomb threats. Heightened levels of security ...’ He punched in an extension number.
Wagner couldn’t see what it was but he didn’t need to, either. He knew it was the police commissioner’s and that he would probably be leading the murder investigation—and that from now on he would have all the top brass in the Ministry for Justice, PET and Special Operations breathing down his neck. It would be tricky and the workload immense. He wasn’t looking forward to this at all.
Half an hour later, when he left Hartvigsen and Hans Erik Dagø, the police commissioner, Wagner went down to the canteen, more out of habit than anything else. Or a reluctance to sit in his office staring at his computer.
Jan Hansen appeared to have the same idea. He was sitting with a cup of coffee and a huge snail-like Danish pastry, reading the newspaper. Wagner felt weak at the knees and longed for a straightforward murder case without any blood-drenched videos or End of Days overtones, so for once he bought a cake under the pretext of low blood sugar and an imminent fainting fit.
‘Anything interesting?’ He sat down with his tray.
Hansen dipped his head in acknowledgement. ‘Usual stuff. And then there was the bomb threat, of course.’
‘A bomb threat?’
Hansen turned to page seven of the newspaper and showed it to Wagner.
‘Oh, that.’
He scanned the page. Dicte Svendsen had been in town doing a robot-watch. Hellish times they were living in, he thought. Nothing was straightforward any more. One way or another crime nearly always turned political these days. Even local politicians were demanding their own Marie now.
‘Not much to report from Grønnegade,’ Hansen declared, folding the paper and putting it on the table. ‘I spoke to most of the residents in the apartment block. I’ve arranged to speak to three more when they come home from work. Then I’ll have done them all except for one who’s still on his holiday.’
‘What does he do?’
‘He works down at the Ceres Brewery. I called them and they told me he’ll be back on Monday.’
Wagner nodded absent-mindedly. The film was running in his head. He stared into empty space and blinked to make it go away, but the body was still squirming on the block and the sabre gleaming in the sun.
‘Are you feeling all right?’ Hansen sounded worried, as though on the point of calling an ambulance.
Wagner looked at him, yet saw nothing when the moment of truth dawned on him. No straightforward murder for him this time around. No easy solutions, no obvious answers. Dicte Svendsen’s film was spreading like a virus through his blood, and it couldn’t be stopped.